22 January, 2012

The famous food of Montreal: the poutine, the bagels and... the smoked meat. If you came to Montreal but you have never tasted one of these, then don't even say you have been here. This might sound a bit extreme. For some people, food is just a food, they don't know what the difference is, and some even skip a meal or two in a day. For Taiwanese, food is extremely important. If you have Taiwanese guests, you could have them live in bad conditions or take them to boring places but if you starved them, it would be unacceptable. Since we were kids, we've been taught that "nothing is more important than meals for human." and that the sequence of human's essential needs is: food, clothing, housing, transportation, education, entertainment. (except for Japanese, for whom it's clothing, food, housing, transportation, education, entertainment.)

Schwartz's is always packed

It was huge, though I ordered only half.

The smoked meat is one of the famous edible in Montreal. You could find it in many restaurants. Even though I'm not a professional gourmet, when I want to eat, I could find a really good place where to get delicious food, and if there was a line up, I would be willing to wait. Schwartz's is legend in Montreal. You can not only find it on your guide book, but also you can hear about it from every Montrealer. The restaurant gives you so much meat it seems like it doesn't have to pay for it. And the waiters are very friendly, lively and humorous.

I'd like to say thank you to an enthusiastic stranger who told me where the restaurant was when I nearly got lost. He was really nice. While he knew I was going to Schwartz's, he gave me a suggestion: "if you don't like fat, order medium fat. Otherwise, you won't get to finish it"

19 January, 2012

A church is not such an atypical building for westerners but it is quite particular for an Asian girl like me. Of course we do have churches in Taiwan, but they are different from the churches which are so popular in this country. The Notre-Dame Basilica is a historic building where Celine Dion got married in 1994. Because of that, I paid an admission fee of CAD$5 to get inside the building. Inside it was surprisingly peaceful and quiet, and it didn't smell the same as in temples in Taiwan. A friend of mine even slept in the church, she said it was so comfortable that she couldn't help. Naturally she kept a praying position so that nobody would notice that she was sleeping.

17 January, 2012

One afternoon, my friends and I were supposed to join the daily school activity, which that day was the tour of Jean-Talon market. Unfortunately, while we were waiting in our school's common area, our guide left without our knowledge. Thus, we had to go there by ourselves. We took the metro to the Jean-Talon station and looked for the way to the market. Before we realized the market shouldn't have been that far, we had walked for about 30 minutes. We started asking passerby's at random. Despite the official language being French in Montreal, most people could speak English as well, so no problems for tourists coming here alone.

We finally found where the market was located. In fact, it was not as far as we previously thought. The market was quite large, and surprisingly clean. The reason I loved the place so much was that I could find a wide variety of cheap products as well as free samples of fruit, vegetables and cheese. There was no need to be shy, we could just try it before we paid.

16 January, 2012

My friends and I took a one day tour to Quebec city with a Chinese travel agency. On that day, the meeting time was at 7am. I had to get up around 5am because I lived far away from downtown, and there were only two buses per hour on weekend.

Montmorency falls

We took the tour bus for about three hours to Montmorency falls where we stayed for an hour and a half. We took the cable car to the top and looked around the beautiful falls. I liked the design of the park very much. If there was a park like this near my hometown, I'd certainly go there every weekend to exercise and to listen to the sound of the falls.

Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac

In the afternoon, the tour bus took us to the old city. While I got off the bus, a huge building came into my view. It was breathtaking. I always wondered how many years it took to built these European style buildings. Before I came to Canada, I could only see these kinds of buildings on TV or I had to go to Tokyo Disney land. I felt I was really lucky to have seen these before I died. After I took plenty of pictures of the street, I lingered away the whole afternoon in this amazing city (second only to Montreal ;).

14 January, 2012

In spite of being from a tropical marine climate country, I felt the summer in Montreal was unspeakably hot. The outdoor temperature was occasionally up to more than 30 degrees and the sunlight was extremely strong as if I laid on the BBQ net. Likewise the indoor temperature was fierier than that, it always made me wonder if I was in an oven. Once, I tried to find the switch to turn on the air conditioner, and I found a button near the door of my room. Pressing it a few times, I thought it simply wasn't working, but it actually was the switch for the heat system. After that, I found out that there were neither an air conditioner nor a fan in the house. My mom told me that nobody stayed in the house in the summer because it was so hot that everybody was going out for a walk or to chat with the neighbors.

Even the metro stations, the metro cars and the buses had no air conditioner. Afterwards I understand why they don't. The summer is so short in Montreal, that it's not worth installing them.

People here grasped every chance to go out in the short summer. Girls dressed very sexy, with small vests and tight short pants being very common, and enjoyed to stay under the sun a lot to get a healthy suntan, whereas I put SPF 50 PA++ sun cream as much as I could to prevent my skin from becoming dark. In Taiwan, girls even carry the parasol (check the photo on the right) to avoid the sun shine. We have an idiom which says "A white complexion is powerful enough to hide three faults". The three faults include the face, the body shape and the bearing. Because of this idiom, you can find whitening ingredients added into most facial care products in Taiwan.

13 January, 2012

Because of my stomachache I had to ground myself for a week. My friends were concerned about my sickness and kept sending messages to me. They wanted to know how serious my sickness was, so they brought white bread and came to visit me during that week. I was touched and I deeply appreciated their kindness. How lucky I was, I had no family in an unfamiliar place, but I had such good friends here.

When the weekend arrived, I asked my friends about their plans. I couldn't stand being prisoner of my room anymore. Therefore, I joined them to the Olympic stadium, also nicknamed "The Big O".

11 January, 2012

At midnight, while I was sleeping, I was suddenly waken up by a strong discomfort in my stomach. Because of that I couldn't sleep at all. I waited until the sun came up. I looked into the student manual and found a hospital which was near my home stay. I took down some vocabulary words in English on a note, and grabbed my electronic dictionary and passport with me.

I couldn't put up with the pain in my stomach. Each step I took always made the pain worse, therefore I had to walk as slow as I could. After I filled out the form in the hospital, I finally saw a doctor. It was hard work for the doctor and for me as well. I couldn't understand the questions that the doctor asked and he couldn't determine what exactly my problem was. Luckily I had brought my electronic dictionary, so we used it to communicate. However, the doctor still was not sure what the problem was with my stomach. He told me to take an X-ray. I waited for three hours to do it. After that, I refused to do more medical checks because I had neither time nor money, so I asked the doctor to give me the pills and I paid a total of $270 in the end.

For about a week, I've survived only on water and white bread, and the pain was so strong I couldn't stand straight...

10 January, 2012

We celebrated a friend's birthday at Carlos & Pepes. Ethnic cuisine is one of my favorite things. I ordered a shrimp combo and the restaurant offered me plenty of big shrimps, which made me extremely happy. There were four types of sauces. I couldn't help but to dip a shrimp in one of them, and it was quite juicy although a bit spicy at first. Overall, we were very pleased with the food, the ambiance and the service.

09 January, 2012

My first day in school. Apparently I was assigned to the basic level class. It wasn't an easy job to teach at that level. Most of time students didn't understand what the teachers were saying, so the teachers had to be very patient and use the easiest vocabulary to teach the students as they would teach to three year old children. They sometimes needed to play games to cheer the students up, to prevent them from getting bored or falling asleep.

In the morning class, students were mostly from Latin America, and surprisingly young. Some of them were still minors. This was the first time I met Latin-Americans in real life. My first impression of them was that they're passionate and dare to express their own idea. Because of them, the class never got boring. My teacher was a Pakistani woman who had a little daughter. She knew how to deal with the students. If they begged the teacher not to give them homework, she would have her way to convince them to do it.

Compared with Latin-Americans, I was totally autistic. I was very quiet in class. In Taiwan, students are not encouraged to speak. I only remember that we were always asked to be quiet by teachers. If the break time was put off because of some students who had questions, the said students would be accused of trying to stand out and isolated by their classmates. So don't be too surprised by any quiet Taiwanese student: we were simply educated this way. Of course, teenagers have a better education today than they had in my time.

Therefore, my task as a reborn student was "to speak more in the class".

08 January, 2012

After I arrived in Montreal, I spent a whole week to recover from
the jet lag. I started making new friends immediately. I met my first friend,
Cindia, in school orientation. Although we had nearly the same age, she took
care of me most of the time. She stayed in Vancouver for a while so she knew a
bit about Canada. Initially, when I was shopping and I had to pay cash, she
always helped me with the coins. At that time, I wasn't familiar with Canadian
coin denominations, such as 1, 5, 10 and 25 cents and 1 and 2 dollars. The 1
and 10 cents are not only similar, but also the font is extremely small. I
often had to ask the cashier for help before paying the bill. I ended up
relying on the color to recognize the coin. We only have four coin
denominations in Taiwan (1, 5, 10 and 50 dollars).

07 January, 2012

On the first day of school, every student had to get to school before 8 o'clock in the morning because we were going to do a qualification test which included reading, listening, writing and speaking. After the test, the school workers came to tell us about the policy of the school, and they also asked us to sign some papers that were all written in English. Of course I couldn't understand, but I signed.

In the afternoon, the school workers showed students around a few places near the school.

05 January, 2012

Before starting school, my Spanish friend and home stay mate helped me get there by public transportation. We took the bus and transferred to the metro by using an OPUS card. A card costs around CAD$70 per month.

The transportation in Montreal is pretty convenient. However, there are a few things that I can't get used to. First of all, I learned that while I was taking the bus, I MUST keep awake to avoid missing the place where I need to get off because neither the marquee nor the announcer would let me know what the next stop is. The bus driver is only announcing when something happens, moreover he's only announcing in French. Furthermore, I was shocked when the metro, which had not reached a full stop at the station yet, opened its doors to let people out. It looked not only dangerous, but also quite unusual, even though it seemed it was business as usual for the locals. Finally, there is no washroom in any metro station. I always wondered what someone, especially someone drunk, should do if he was waiting for the metro and needed to unexpectedly liberate something in emergency. It explains a bit the smell of urine that we sometime find in the metro. (just kidding)

04 January, 2012

The home stay was arranged by my school (about which I'll tell you later). They asked me to fill a wish list, and they found a home stay that matched perfectly what I wanted:

1. Whether they should have pets or kids?

No pet please. Not that I dislike them, but some are just uncontrollable.

2. How far should the home stay be from the school?

Have to be less than 30 mins. Think about it, who would like to get up early in the winter?

3. Do you have allergy to any food?

Spicy food and fish. I have a sensitive stomach and the fish... I'm too lazy to take the bone off.
4. Others? I hope the nationality of the home stay family would beFilipino or Vietnamese, so I can eat rice.

They found me a mom who doesn't like spicy food either, is Filipino, and has a husband and two kids. And it was taking exactly 30mins to get to school from my home stay.

My mom gave me a wide pink room (the largest in the house) with a huge closet. I noticed there were two single beds in the room, although she told me that I would be the only one to occupy it. While I was trying to unsuccessfully plug the cable line to connect the Internet, I suddenly felt something dark and heavy invading my heart. I couldn't even breathe. It made me depressed and homesick. When my mom told me to access the Internet with the Wi-Fi, my world became colorful immediately. Clearly I suffer from IAD (Internet Addiction Disorder).

03 January, 2012

I was kept prisoner into a small box with a pair of wings and flew halfway around the earth for about 16 hours. After I watched uncountable movies and tried to sleep intermittently, I finally arrived in Canada. I was very nervous and feared that the border service officer would ask me many questions, which I probably wouldn't be able to answer. Fortunately they didn't.

When I arrived to my home stay, my mom gave me a hug. Wow! It was a bit out of my range because Taiwanese are not used to hug strangers, but I remained silent. Now being abroad, I knew I had to get accustomed to their culture. I was very exhausted by the 12 hours time difference with Taiwan. It took me a week to recover from the jet lag. Although I was dreaming about becoming a flight attendant, I don't think I'm qualified for that job anymore.

02 January, 2012

When I was a university student, I had a dream: studying English in a foreign country. At that age, my dream was very simple, I just wanted to speak the "international language" fluently, hoping one day I would be capable of helping anyone who traveled to my country and got lost on the street. At that time, if a foreigner walked towards me, my heart would start beating, my hands would start sweating and I would silently scream to myself "Please do not ask me any question because I'm not gonna understand what you're saying!".

After university, I started working. In the beginning of 2010, I suddenly realized it was time for me to do what I've always wanted to do, so I determinedly quit my job. I convinced my parents to let me leave them for a while. I only brought my passport, a one way plane ticket, two big luggages, one suitcase and tons of excitement with me. I began my abroad life without understanding any word of English on July 13. 2010.

Unknowingly, this also happened to be the 30th birthday of my future boyfriend.

01 January, 2012

It's not the first time I see snow, but I've never made any snowman in my life. On the first day of the year 2012, it was only one degree outside, and I finally resolved myself to fix this. Actually, I made a snowoman as some acute observers may have noticed.

Some people like me always postpone something they want to do in the moment, always thinking that they will have time to do it tomorrow. In fact, after having postponed their plan once, they rarely ever find the will to do it later. One day, when they think back, their memory is only filled with regrets. I've learned from my past mistakes, and one of my new year's resolution was to change this bad habit.

I could have started this blog a year ago when I arrived in Montreal. At that moment, everything that I had experienced was fresh for me. I can't imagine how much fun I've forgotten so far. But it's never too late to put down these invaluable memories in pictures and in writing. I'll try to remember the past as much as I can and share it with you through this blog.

I started writing a blog in January 1st. 2012. A new year, a new beginning, I think everybody has new expectations for themselves. Despite how much you can achieve, having a dream means having hope. As opposed to someone who wishes to lose weight or earn a lot of money, my desire is to grow my brain. When I realize that I'm getting older, but my wisdom is not gaining proportionally to my age, it makes me panic. Some people buy brand products, fashion clothes, facial care products, do laser surgery or get a botox shot to build their self-confidence, I'd rather improve my brain and distribute my self-confidence from inside to outside.

My new year's resolutions are neither too numerous nor too difficult to attain. I just set up a few points, but each of those points are extremely important to me. I want: